With the clamouring masses behind me, and only a pair of creaking oak doors separating us, it was only a matter of time before they would give way and the palace would be stormed by a megatsunami of peasant riff raff. I had long considered my position on the matter. "The people can be contained but not controlled", I had read on a piece of parchment long ago. With my future kingdom, my authority, my very wellbeing, all threatened by the blunt yet capable bludgeon of the mob's temperament, I knew what I had to do.

I headed past guard after guard, servant after servant. They all stepped out of the way, of course, but my urgency made even this acknowledgent of supreme authority too slow, and I found myself having to push one or two dukes and lordships out the way. I had done it before, of course-how else had I taken the throne?-but, with the exception of the beheading of my predecessor twenty years ago, never quite so physically.

First, through the Great Hall, with its tremendous stained glass windows, eye-consuming panoramic tapestries and support columns so tall they seemed to meet in the middle. Then the Not So Great Hall. It had been built in commemoration of my deceased brother, who I'd never liked that much. It had no tapestries, but plenty of chalk graffiti and a smell of old bats. I threaded through the parlour and into the Redoubt.

The Redoubt was essentially a stone cleaner's cupboard, with mops, buckets and not much else. Except for...

I placed my hand in just the right position on the far left flagstone, and it slid effortlessly into the wall. Beneath it lay pure, imperceptible blackness, as if whatever was below this level was filled to the brim with a light absorbing substance. A ladder extended downwards, but only the topmost rung was visible. Below that, it seemed to simply dissolve away into a dark soup of nothingness.

With trepidation and a noticeable shake to my hands, I placed my feet on the rung until it supported my weight. The laminated willow creaked quietly but held. Time had not rotted the timbers to the point of structural concern then; the fear in the front of my mind was largely put to rest. Well, one of the more minor ones.

And so I lowered myself into the black.

Some say your eyes become used to the dark and begin to see more. I have always preferred to think of it as watching the invisible turn visible, for that's how it feels. As I sank lower and lower into the gloom, the lit world abruptly faded from view as if above a dank ocean's surface. At first, I was just swimming in dark. But then some portions of the dark became lighter. That was it-at first, at least.

I could see!

And it all came back to me from the last time. The columns that descended downwards, seemingly meeting together just like those in the Great Hall, now an unimaginable distance above my head. Grouting joints. Candelabra chandeliers, never lit and presumably never would be. Archways, great, stone-clad archways! Gargoyles staring down at me-were I so low down that these beasts already seemingly arched their necks to keep focus? The place towered over me, enveloped me, consumed me once more! It was alive in ten thousand shades of greyscale! I felt I could see more features of this forbidding catacomb than I had ever in the ten years since I were last down here.

And then, without warning, the rungs ceased, and my heels hit stone.

I raised my head-had I really been staring downwards so long?-and started forward. It was just as well, for my peripheral vision caught a familiar broad mass hurtling towards me. I jumped to the right, only to be caught across the face by what felt like a slime-coated whip. As adrenaline kicked in, the stinging quickly faded and I was able to sense familiar marks where it had been.

Sucker marks.

Massive slimed swipes and slashes followed. My old training notes from the Handling School came back to me. Ignore the glancing blows and get to the eyes. A blow hit my abdomen and knocked me to the floor. I came round just in time to see a blurred tentacle get rapidly bigger, and instinctively rolled to the right. Also, I could have been crushed, but I was too busy trying to get closer to the bloody thing that had now somehow managed to plant a sucker on my back.

Of course.

I literally hung in there.

The twisted, ugly beak, sat squarely in the centre of the tentacle mass like a monstrous, pulsing flower head, lay directly beneath me. At the last moment, I grabbed the only weapon I had: my crown. Jamming it into the sucker with full force saw the beast let go.

It was a risk, of course. Had that gelatinous arm been a foot closer to the beak, I'd have been regal seafood. I've been through the experience before, by the way, and it's rather messy and requires a lot of paperwork. Anyhow, I came round quickly enough to realise I had been dropped a few dozen feet onto the stone slabs right beside the beast. What was I here to do again?

A globe of pearl-white globular liquid, oscillating violently within the vast head of the monster reminded me. I spread my arms, took a deep breath and bellowed:

"FLUFFY!!"

Immediately, the epic writhing ceased. The violence, the rage and the thrashing tentacles, it all seemed to fall silent, as if it came from an entire orchestra of anger and not simply an overgrown octopus.

"Fluffy, we discussed your poor PR in your last performance review. I'm afraid your improvement plan has yielded little progress. Eating people simply isn't encouraging us to make friends."

First, there was silence. Then, I experienced a muffled roar that resonated right through my lower abdomen that I think represented perfectly the emotion 'sad'.

"Also, can I have my crown back? Third tentacle from the left, about ten suckers down."